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2013|14 Annual Report Fraunhofer IGB

23 separation of rare earth metals, the automated production of skin models in the “Skin Factory”, the catalytic conversion of methane and carbon dioxide (biogas) to methanol and the elucidation of protein interactions with synthetic proteins. Dr. Johannes Strümpfel of Von Ardenne GmbH and Dr. Markus Wolperdinger of Linde Engineering Dresden GmbH (chairman of the Fraunhofer IGB’s advisory board since early 2013) rounded off the program with presentations from the perspective of industry. From IGf to IGB The roots of the Fraunhofer IGB lie in Germany’s Palatinate region, where, in 1953, the renowned physicist and chemist Prof. Karl Lothar Wolf established a laboratory – initially on the premises of the local high school – for investigating the physics and chemistry of interfaces. Here he could devote him- self to the study of interfacial processes on powdered solids. A short time later, the institute moved to nearby Marienthal, and in 1962 it was taken over with its handful of employees by the fledgling Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft as the Fraunhofer Institute for Physics and Chemistry of Interfaces IGf. When the institute moved to Stuttgart in 1969, Prof. Karl Hamann, director of the 2nd Institute for Technical Chemistry at the University of Stuttgart and head of the thriving Stuttgart-based Research Institute for Pigments and Coatings e. V. (a member of the AiF German Federation of Industrial Research Associations net- work) took over as acting head. In 1976, Dr.-Ing. Horst Chmiel, a medical technology research specialist at the Helmholtz Institute in Aachen, was appointed successor to Prof. Hamann, who retired on age grounds. Under his influence, the discipline of biotechnology was built up, and the institute focused more strongly and more appli- cation-oriented on process technology. This gave rise to the institute’s current name, “Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB”, or Fraunhofer IGB for short. A new focal point then emerged: the “interfacial prob- lems of medicine”, effectively the interface between the inter- faces field and the new field of medical process engineering. Today’s key area of environmental biotechnology dates back to 1978, when it was established to develop and optimize 1 2

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